


Praying to the ghosts of you and me

by yoursbucky



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoursbucky/pseuds/yoursbucky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve didn't jump after Bucky. However, Bucky jumped after Steve, and Steve just can't deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Praying to the ghosts of you and me

The day Steve realized Bucky jumped after him is actually a chilly night in Germany. Not that he didn’t know it before – he saw it, he distinctly remembers the silver of Bucky’s bionic arm reaching for him through the murky waters of the Potomac before everything faded to black for a week. What sent him running for the bathroom and made him empty his stomach almost not making it to the toilet bowl was that Bucky, barely remembering him, jumped after he fell off the Insight Helicarrier, and he, of sound mind and even sounder body, didn’t jump after Bucky into the ravine. Worse, he didn’t even think about jumping after Bucky, which turns his mostly empty stomach over a second time. Sure he tried to grab his arm. It doesn’t count.

How he got to this, he has not idea. May be it was the fact that that day, for the first time in months, he knows with almost complete certainty where Bucky is in the world (9 blocks, a left, a right, 3 blocks from here). He knows he is going to see him tomorrow. In a way, it calmed him down – the past few months had been spent anxiously wondering: was Bucky alive? Where was he? Was he _Bucky_? Did he want to be who he was? Did he remember Steve? Did he care about him?... Yet that night Steve went to bed without his heart racing, expecting to fall asleep and wake up at 6am local time to the dot. Yet, something stopped him from embracing the night and he let his mind wander between waking and dreaming. And somehow, somehow he had realized that barely-overcoming-brainwashing-Bucky’s first instinct was to save him. In way, Steve supposed it was always like that – he was the troublemaker, and Bucky just kinda followed him into the fight, sometimes willingly, other times...

Steve retched into the white porcelain a few more times, until there was nothing left in his stomach. He couldn’t clearly remember the last time he was sick – being beaten up, getting stiches - yes, he could recall the feeling because this is his life now – but being sick he barely remembers in the fading memories of his youth. He realized the serum wasn’t perfect when he couldn’t remember the color of his – their - old couch. His mother used to say “You forget the bad, because the good is the only thing that matters” and he decides to chalk it up to the fact that the couch was ugly and not that he was losing the precious little that made him who he was. He returned to his bed in the rented room and wondered what bed Bucky was sleeping in _. Does he like his bed, whatever it is? Does he_ —no, Steve tells himself. No use dwelling onto the questions when it will all come together in a short few hours.

Steve never gets to ask for the answers of these questions because while he does see Bucky the next day, things go incredibly bad in the span of about 7 minutes. Incredibly, mind-blowingly bad.

 

* * *

 

 

It is months, many months later when he is in another bed, in another country, that he remembers again. Funny how his brain decides to throw things at him only when they are the last thing he needs to think about. This time he doesn’t puke his guts out – he just swallows the bile down his throat and sits up in his bed. Bucky is next to him, sleeping as calmly as he can while constantly being on the edge. He is a much, much lighter sleeper now, but that still means he sleeps like the dead, which leaves Steve open to slowly creep out of the bed. He still has the compulsive need to see that Bucky’s breathing, then check his own pulse, then see that Bucky’s chest is rising and falling evenly again. After this now routine check, he heads for the en-suite bathroom. Thank god for housemaids - even with his super health, he remains a wary germaphobe, reminder of another lifetime filled with sickness – because the tiles are white and pristine clean for him to lay down on them. He turns so his entire forehead rests on the cold floor, taking in deep breaths hoping to chase away the nausea that doesn’t seem to want to leave. _He is safe, I am safe, he is alive, I am alive_ , _he is safe_ Steve chants in his head. _You didn’t jump, but he is safe, you’re safe, he is alive, you’re alive_ …

He doesn’t know how much time passes before he hears Bucky get up and sees him walk into the bathroom. For good or bad, Bucky really is himself.

“What is it?” he demands, in the same tone Peggy used to. Which one of them started using it first he has can’t remember anymore. Yet another thing.

“It’s nothing.”

“I see. Well Steve, I might have spent 70 years being brainwashed but you see, I think I would have remembered by now if this was something you used to regularly do and I clearly haven’t. So…?” He lets the question trail on, sitting down on the cold tiles next to Steve, crossing his legs. Steve turns so he’s lying on his back and stares at the ceiling.

“You jumped after me. On the helicarrier that is, you jumped after me, even though you barely remembered me. And when you fell off the train, I didn’t jump. I didn’t even think about it.” He sighs and hopes he can keep the contents of his stomach inside it.

On his right, Bucky starts laughing.

“That’s got your panties in a twist? Oh my God. Of all things!”

Steve sat up.

“Of all things? Bucky, what does it say about me as your… your person! You were brain washed and you---”

“Steve, I jumped like a 100 feet into water. You would’ve jumped into cold, hard ground. Not that I didn’t deal with that amazingly, but that’s because I was amazing even before I became super---”

“Why are you turning this into a joke? If I had jumped, I would most probably have survived; saved you from enemy lines and we wouldn’t even be here?”

“Well, I quite like it _here_.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the rest of the apartment. “It doesn’t matter Steve. As I was saying, I’m amazing and I managed to only break my arm falling from the train. Knowing you, you’d probably land square on your face and then I would have had to scrape off your nose from the ice. Instead I got to pass out, you got to freeze your way into the 21-st century and Hydra got to be idiots and send me, of all people, after you. I hear that put a real spanner in the thing they had going o”

“So your reasoning is that not jumping after you did more good than bad? What mental gymnastics did you have to do to reach this conclusion?”

“My mental gymnastics? What about yours? Steve, get it together. No use dwelling onto the past. And it did do more good than bad.” Bucky sat up and extended his arm. “I’m done with this midnight soiree. I need to sleep and so do you. Can’t have you jittery on coffee on missions, that’s just bad press.”

Steve gingerly put his into Bucky’s when, out of nowhere, Bucky dragged him into an embrace.

“Stop thinking about stupid stuff. I much more prefer it that you didn’t jump after me.” He whispered into Steve’s ear and without letting go of his hand, started dragging him towards the bed. “Come on grandpa, it’s past your bed time!”

“You’re older than me.”

“It’s how old you feel that matters.” Steve could hear him grinning into the darkness.  “And unlike you, I don’t have any wrinkles.”

**Author's Note:**

> First fic, ever! Tense jumps a lot. Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
